Participants:
This is for all levels– from outright newbie to master. Yes, all in
one seminar and all get something out
of it and all have fun. Even
accompanying mates who never thought of attending a seminar could
have fun. The number can be 20 to 30 or even more folks. One can be
fully active participant or observer or passive viewing participant
for one, two or three days.
This is recommended for undecided
newbies and travel company. The status can be changed to active any
time- we warn you, most do change the status quickly. If you are not
sure whether you want to really do this you are invited to come as
'lurker' for 20 minutes for
free and then you decide.

General philosophy:
Everyone
does what they want to do
and how much they want to do. While Jim Doyle and Walter Pall will
make it clear what they thinkshould
be done it is the participant who decides. The aim is to learn how to
approach styling, and learn to see new ways and actually
trying them out. New techniques will be taught like
e.g. work on deadwood.

But
the emphasis is on making design decisions. So many workshops teach
wiring and basic techniques. This is taken for granted in this
seminar. The emphasis is on what often is not taught: bonsai as art
form. It is important to know your place in bonsai which offers many
different ways. Learning by doing, learning by case studies is how we
reach the aims. On many different
trees we discuss and
practice art, craft and speak
about philosophy. Basic
craft like wiring is
often avoided to not waste time for
things
which really
make a big difference (while they are important, but there are many
workshops to practice
these).

In
many traditional workshop the teacher makes the decisions
for the students who do exactly what he
tells them and often the
teacher actually does the critical work for the student.
So the students never learn how to make decisions. To practice art is
to make decisions all the time. The aim of the seminar it to teach
how
to make the right decisions. Your
trees will most of the time not be touched by the teacher in this
seminar.

What's going to happen: In
the morning the first participants arrive. The nursery crew and Jim
and Walter can help to choose trees for the workshop. All trees that
the participants brought and the chosen ones from
the nurser are carried to
the greenhouse.

Usually
a session of general interest follows speaking
about many different subjects related to bonsai. This will most
of the time take place
in the yurt.

Then
we go to the greenhouse. Walter
or Jim start to speak about a tree to
the whole class, explain
choices and then may actually do a couple of things to the tree to
give an example. Then the
participants form groups which choose a tree and discuss it for 15
minutes or so. Usually every group has one old timer who knows where
to go. Then the speakers
of the groups present the trees to the whole class. After some
discussions one or more feasible options are decided.

And
then this will be actually done. Those who brought a tree can now
decide whether they what to do the work immediately or can choose
to do nothing with their tree at the moment. Whenever someone is
finished the next tree is chosen to study, discuss and work on. The
aim is to have many valuable case studies for leaning what usually is
not taught at workshops. By
presenting each tree to the whole class one learns
about a couple dozen trees over the weekend compared with one normal
workshops. Much more new experience
and knowledge comes from that.

Generally we avoid doing craft
work that is time consuming. Not that this work is not important. But
we want to spend the time on things which are even more important and
not taught usually.

Nobody is forced to work in a
certain style. While it is well known that Jim and Walter work a lot
in the Naturalistic Bonsai Style the actual style is decided by the
participant – and often enough by the tree.

Once in a while Jim or Walter
will speak about subjects of interest for a while.

An important part of the
seminar are the social interconnections during the day and
gatherings after work. Many long time friendships were built on these
occasions.

Material: All
active participants can bring their own trees. This can be very
simple material to masterpiece. We speak about every tree in depth.
The participant decides what he wants to actually do to the tree
then.

In
addition the nursery offers a great wealth of material that the
participants can discuss and actually work on. These are mostly old
to very old collected conifers like limber pine, ponderosa pine,
lodgepole pine, Engelmann spruce, Colorado blue spruce. Alpine fir,
Douglas fir and others as well as some deciduous broadleaved trees
like hedge maples, trident maples, European hornbeam, Japanese maples
and some others. Thereusually are 400 or more
trees available to choose from. A few dozen are outright world class,
many very good, all hand selected by myself. There are over 150 trees
in the range from US$ 50
to 600, about 50 from 600 to 1,500. Everybody can find himself a
genuine American collected tree. This
is the biggest selection of this kind of trees west of the Rockies.

The 'borrowed' material can be
purchased at any time, but it does not have to be purchased. The
offer is that you actually do serious styling on the material and
only afterwards decide whether you want it for yourself or not.

There usually is a special
sale during the seminar weekends. The prices are usually reduced for
most items which are offered at the nursery.

If someone does not want to
participate in the seminar and is only interested in the trees you
are welcome to visit the nursery to these special weekends.